Orland Park’s Sandburg Marching Eagles to Perform at Sugar Bowl

The New Year will be extra sweet for the Carl Sandburg High School Marching Band when they perform in New Orleans at the 82nd Annual Allstate Sugar Bowl Halftime Show.

The Marching Eagles were chosen to perform on January 1 at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, the largest fixed dome in the country and home to the NFL’s New Orleans Saints. The CSHS Band was selected along with 14 other marching band programs throughout the country by the WorldStrides Heritage Performance. A total of 2,000 high school students will perform.

“We are very proud to have the Carl Sandburg High School Marching Band represent Orland Park at the Sugar Bowl,” said Orland Park Mayor Dan McLaughlin. “It’s always exciting to have young people from Orland Park represent the community on a national stage.”

The Orland Park musicians depart December 28 and will travel by coach bus to New Orleans with 130 of the 160 band members and color guards performing their 2015 show, “If I Only Had.” The group will return January 2.

Carl Sandburg High School Band Director Stewart Bailey said, “I am extremely honored to have our students invited to perform for the 2016 Sugar Bowl festivities. I am also very excited to see the students’ impressions of all of the wonderful music, architecture, food, and history that New Orleans has to offer. I was very happy and excited for our students to have the great opportunity to perform in New Orleans when I received the official invitation.”

In addition to performing to a sold-out stadium of more than 70,000 fans, the band will participate in the Sugar Bowl Parade, perform twice in the French Quarter and compete in the Sugar Bowl Battle of the Bands.

Orland Park Village Clerk John Mehalek, whose son Joe plays percussion, is traveling to New Orleans with his family.“This is a great experience for all of the kids. They’ve worked hard all year and to be chosen from among bands across the country is a testament to the band program at Sandburg,” Mehalek said. “We are all very excited to be a part of it and they are certainly making Orland Park very proud.”

The award-winning Marching Eagles received first place at this year’s Sandwich Marching Band Festival and third place at Andrew High School’s Marching Band Festival.

This is the first time that the Marching Eagles will perform in New Orleans. Previously, the band played at the 70th commemoration of the attacks on Pearl Harbor, President Obama’s 2009 Inaugural Parade and at the 2007 Disney World Thanksgiving Day Parade in Anaheim, CA.
The band is led by Bailey and assistant band director, Brian Hillhouse.